


to get away from it all.

by thisandthisandthis



Category: My Own Private Idaho (1991)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon Compliant, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Inner Dialogue, Introspection, POV First Person, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-19 13:42:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22445218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisandthisandthis/pseuds/thisandthisandthis
Summary: mike waters meets a stranger, and does some thinking.
Relationships: Mike Waters & Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	to get away from it all.

I woke up in the passenger seat of a stranger’s car.

My shoes were missing from my feet, and a blanket had been tucked around my shoulders. The countryside raced past outside the window, greens and yellows and browns whose familiarity provided me no comfort. It was despairingly empty aside from the occasional farmhouse or smaller, winding road diverging from this one like a tributary.

I wiggled white-socked toes. This felt real. This felt painfully, exhaustingly real. I wanted to go back to sleep. When my hand twitched nervously in my lap, the stranger noticed my movement. “Hey, kid?” he said, eyes flicking back and forth from me to the road, me to the road. “You awake?”

“Mm,” I grunted, because I didn’t know what to say.

“You were all alone, passed out on the road. What were you doing out there, kid?” The stranger’s fingers danced along the steering wheel, tapping out a beat to some song only he could hear. He seemed nervous, to me, at least. Maybe he wasn’t used to seeing people passed out in the middle of some endless, fucked up road in Idaho.

I elected not to respond. I didn’t know if I even had the answer. “Why’d you pick me up?” I said, nearly inaudible. The stranger leaned towards me a bit as if trying to hear better.

“I couldn’t just leave you out there, could I?” He glanced at me quizzically, and then blinked as if suddenly remembering something he’d forgotten. “You want anything to eat, kid?”

”Sure,” I said, somehow tripping over that one-syllable word. My thoughts felt sluggish. It wasn’t the usual kind of sluggish, though, not like I was about to fall asleep again. I was just confused. Why’d this guy want to help me? Why did he care? Why was he pulling up to a convenience store, ready to buy me something to eat, when he didn’t even know me?

None of the these questions came out of my mouth when he looked at me expectantly, halfway out of the driver’s seat. I gestured to my feet. “Don’t have shoes,” I said dumbly. Only then did it strike me, dully, that someone must have stolen them, along with my missing jacket.

“Right, stay here. I’ll be in and out. Get you somethin’ to eat.” He swung the door shut, and I was alone.

My brain still wasn’t as awake as the rest of my body, so everything felt a bit fuzzy. The world often took a while to come back into focus after one of my impromptu naps. Weary and irritated, I slapped my hands to my cheeks, hoping that the mild pain would jolt me awake. The resulting smack was a loud intrusion into the still air of the Stranger’s car. I felt strange, as though I had done something I shouldn’t have. God, when have I ever worried about that?

Outside my window, the road stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, soaking heat into its greedy black surface, bisected by a tidy line of corn-yellow. It seemed to run the entire length of the world. I could sit here in this stranger’s car, in the four-space parking lot outside the convenience store, becoming accustomed to the sickly smell of gas and the rough twitch of the blanket over my bare arms, and simply watch the road. Forever, maybe. I believe that if I ever saw a car pass, and if I waited enough time afterwards, that same car might have appeared on the opposite horizon of this road, as though it had travelled the world in a single, continuous circuit.

My life consists of roads leading to roads leading to roads. I’m never in one spot, but I always end up in the same place. My consciousness is cracked. The holes are filled in by anxieties and inexplicable sleep, connecting reality to reality through unwanted abstraction. My eyelids, heavy as armor, are at war against me. I pass out and I wake up back in the goddamn endless loop of my life. My life. My life. My life.

It gets exhausting, after a while. Having to deal with the fucked up world and the fucked up people in it every single fucked up day.

As I stared aimlessly out of the window, then, waiting for the Stranger to return with his plastic bag of roadside groceries, I made up my mind. I’m not doing this anymore. Not for one more goddamn second. I’m not gonna wander around like a street dog, lost and pathetic. I’m not gonna let this fucking world get to me anymore.

The Stranger came out of the store gripping a bag. As he slid into the driver’s seat again, I was quiet. I didn’t ask why he had picked me up off the side of the road. I didn’t ask why he seemed to trust me enough to leave me alone in his car. I didn’t ask why he offered to care for me, to feed me, to treat me like I was worth helping. I gave him a small smile, though. The corners of his lips turned up at that as he handed me a sandwich wrapped in paper.

“Ham and cheese. That okay?”

“Yeah.” I hadn’t realized just how hungry I was until the smell of the food reached my nose. I took a big bite as the Stranger pulled back onto the road and we continued on, just to the right of those thick yellow lines.

_I don’t know why, but I feel safe here._

The Stranger was quiet. He didn’t ask me for my name, or where I was going. He just drove. All I could hear was the low hum of the engine and the shift of the tires against the road. There was a small crack in the window to my right. Wind whistled through it in a cool stream. I shifted, just slightly, so that it blew against my face. It was cold and clean. It was a sliver of sky on my skin.

As the car rumbled along, I glanced over to the Stranger. He seemed relaxed, one hand curled loosely around the steering wheel, the other leaning against his window. After a few moments had passed he noticed my staring.

“Got anywhere you need to be, kid?” I shook my head. The Stranger grunted in response. “Let me know when you wanna get out.”

The situation suddenly seemed so absurd — a stranger had found me sleeping in the middle of the road, picked me up, bought me food, and was now offering to drop me off wherever I wanted. Like a goddamn taxi driver. I almost laughed, and then I did, loud and rowdy and breathing in spurts, doubling over my own seatbelt, eyes squinting and shining with tears. And suddenly the Stranger was laughing too. And we were losing our minds, trying to catch our breath, giddiness bubbling up inside us like champagne. I’m not sure either of us knew what was so funny, but we didn’t care. The Stranger and me, we just laughed and laughed and laughed until our jaws ached.

For once in my fucking life I felt like I could really keep my eyes open.

_I don’t know what I’m gonna do next. Shit, I don’t even know where this guy is driving me. But for once in my, life I don’t care._

For once in my life, I was getting closer to the end of the road. No more stopping, no more looking back. No more going around and around. No more horizon that never changes.

_Just keep on going forward._

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! comments and kudos are always appreciated <3
> 
> em hotep xx
> 
> \- peach ([more fics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisandthisandthis/works) // [my tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/ezrisbian))


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